Barry Kenna

“It all went off as scheduled: the stately walk to the depot; the solemn train ride, during which we sat staring shyly into the seat in front of us; the difficult walk from Grand Central across Forty-second to Fifth, with pedestrians clipping us and cutting in between us; the bus ride to Fifty-ninth Street; then the Plaza itself, and the cinnamon toast, and the music, and the excitement. The thundering quality of the occasion must have delivered a mental shock to me, deadening my recollection, for I have only the dimmest memory of leading Eileen onto the dance floor to execute two or three unspeakable rounds, in which I vainly tried to adapt my violent sister-and-brother wrestling act into something graceful and appropriate. It must have been awful. And at six o’clock, emerging, I gave no thought to any further entertainment, such as dinner in town.”
― E.B. White, Essays of E. B. White: Self-selected essays spanning a lifetime—Manhattan life, Maine farms, nature, and animals from a New Yorker icon

“Familiarity is the thing—the sense of belonging. It grants exemption from all evil, all shabbiness. A farmer pauses in the doorway of his barn and he is wearing the right boots. A sheep stands under an apple tree and it wears the right look, and the tree is hung with puckered frozen fruit of the right color. The spruce boughs that bank the foundations of the homes keep out the only true winter wind, and the light that leaves the sky at four o'clock automatically turns on the yellow lamps within, revealing to the soft-minded motorist interiors of perfect security, kitchens full of a just and lasting peace. (Or so it seems to the homing traveler.)”
― E.B. White, Essays of E.B. White

“For some weeks now I have been engaged in dispersing the contents of this apartment, trying to persuade hundreds of inanimate objects to scatter and leave me alone. It is not a simple matter. I am impressed by the reluctance of one’s worldly goods to go out again into the world. During September I kept hoping that some morning, as by magic, all books, pictures, records, chairs, beds, curtains, lamps, china, glass, utensils, keepsakes would drain away from around my feet, like the outgoing tide, leaving me standing silent on a bare beach.”
― E.B. White, Essays of E. B. White: Self-selected essays spanning a lifetime—Manhattan life, Maine farms, nature, and animals from a New Yorker icon

“Schizophrenia and bi-polar disorder are often spoken of by laypeople – I used to do it myself – as if they were definitions as precise as those for hepatitis or appendicitis. In reality, the names are no more than those given to a collection of symptoms observable at a certain moment in time.”
― Patrick Cockburn, Henry's Demons: Living with Schizophrenia, A Father and Son's Story